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Diana's Silk Velvet Dress Sells For $800,000
The famed dress worn by Diana, Princess of Wales while dancing with John Travolta brought in the top bid at a Toronto auction that featured some of the late style icon's well-known designer gowns.
The midnight-blue silk velvet dress designed by Victor Edelstein sold for $800,000. Diana wore the Edwardian-inspired gown with off-the-shoulder straps while taking a memorable spin on the dance floor with Travolta during a 1985 White House state dinner.
Prior to the sale, auction house Waddington's had listed the estimated selling price of the dress between $800,000 and $1 million.
Stephen Ranger, vice-president of business development for Waddington's, said it will take a few days to compile a final tally of all 14 dresses sold from the collection. An unofficial tally is around $3.17 million.
Ranger said they were pleased with the overall results, adding that they fell in line with expectations, including for the so-called Travolta dress.
"I think that that dress still represented $800,000 and an exponential return on its original purchase price, and I think 10 years from now people will be looking on that price as a bargain," he said following the auction.
An ornate lilac silk dress with embroidered flowers and bolero jacket by the late Catherine Walker — arguably Diana's favourite designer — sold for $340,000.
Other auction highlights included two other Walker-designed creations. The sleek dresses were worn by Diana in images captured by photographer Mario Testino for a Vanity Fair feature published a month prior to her death. A cream silk crepe dinner dress sold for $250,000 while a black halter-neck dress with beading sold for $210,000.
The collection also includes creations from noted British talents like Bruce Oldfield and Zandra Rhodes.
American entrepreneur Maureen Rorech Dunkel originally purchased 12 of the gowns anonymously at a Christie's auction in New York eight weeks before Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997 at age 36. Two additional dresses were later donated to the collection.
The Tampa Bay, Fla., resident said in an interview last month that she paid US$870,000 for some of the late princess's most well-known gowns. At the time, Dunkel said her preference was to have the collection sold to a single individual, institution or foundation.
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